The Great Improvise
by Cake or Death
Summary: The every day thoughts of Travis as he tries to not love Jones and to keep Derrick from loving her at the same time. Silly roommates.
1. Chapter 1

The rum burned on the way down.

Travis blinked and looked up as the drink made a fiery run down his esophagus. His heart was aflutter; this was the only time he could be truly inspired.

Lights went off like fireworks as dancers molested themselves with music. He wrapped his scarf tighter around his neck and tucked his head deeper into his coat. This was not his arena.

He was only here because _she_ was here.

Over the rim of his shot glass, Travis saw the bartender, who gave him a strange and steady look. Travis saw Derrick, his roommate, as he slowly worked his hand up a girl's skirt. 'Ah, if only I had that finesse,' thought Travis. He couldn't find Jones at first; he looked through the mob of dancers and along the catwalks near the roof, but no sign of her.

And then, there _she_ was.

Garbed in something skimpy and red, a very tall and lanky girl neatly dodged her way through the masses of people dancing on each other. This was Jones. This was the only reason Travis wasn't back at the loft, in his room, on the computer, mapping out the human face and making murals on his walls. So what that he could turn math into art; the masterpiece was heading towards him.

She saw him and a smile broke across her face. This was the Jones he loved.

"Hey Travis, have you seen Derrick?"

With a subtle glance to his left, Travis replied, "No, but Jenny Del Mario has."

She looked in the direction Travis had pointed with his eyes and laughed. "Incredible. Is there ever a moment when he doesn't have his hand up a girl's skirt?"

"Not that I've seen," he said.

Jones seated herself on the bar stool beside him and hunched over the table. "What are you having?"

"Oh, nothing. I was wondering if… maybe we could get out of here soon?"

"Aw, did Rebecca turn you down again?"

Ack, a jab in the heart. Travis' head skipped to a picture of a short girl with even shorter hair who wore vibrantly liberal makeup and had a personality to match. If only he could tell Jones that the reason he'd tried to hit on Rebecca was so that he could try to get over his deep infatuation with-

"Well, I'm sorry, bud," she said as she downed a shot. "There are more girls out there, you just haven't met the right one yet."

He gave a shy smile.

There was a silence between them. It wasn't one of those awkward, unwanted silences that seemed to happen more often than not with him; it was a calming, shared silence that only good friends have. He liked this most of all about Jones. It would happen most over breakfast when he was sitting at the table over a newspaper; she would stumble out of her bedroom garbed in the ridiculous bathrobe she always wore and quietly munch on a bowl of cereal across the table from him, or sometimes she would come into his room while he worked and she would sit in her pool of silence and just watch his hands turn the world into his canvas. 

Derrick wasn't quiet like Jones. Jones could watch the world go by with her soft, understanding eyes. Derrick couldn't sit still to save his life; he always had to be moving, had to be touching something, had to be talking to someone… If Derrick wasn't the one paying for the loft, he wasn't sure how they'd be able to live together.

"Yeah, I don't think we're going to get Derrick to come home till later," she commented about their stud roommate. "You want to go back home?"

He gave his shy smile again. "Sure."


	2. Chapter 2

Jones pushed the door shut with her thin body. "Do you think I should leave it unlocked for Derrick?" she asked with a slightly drunken smile.

Travis hung his coat up and skipped down the hall as he tried to take off his shoes. "He'll probably bring her back here; you'd better leave it open, especially if he's as drunk as we are."

Jones laughed.

He rounded the corner into his room and sat down in the chair presented in front of his several computer monitors. After successfully taking off his second shoe, Travis pulled his shirt up over his head. When it was half off, he paused; he didn't hear the familiar click-click of Jones' heels on the floor.

"Jones?" he asked into the emptiness of his room.

There wasn't a noise or a call back, just returned emptiness.

"Jones-y? Cathy Jones?" His eyes shifted from side to side, now slightly alarmed. He stood up and managed his way over to his doorframe, peering down the entrance hall. "Jones?"

She was sitting with her back against the door, completely unmoving, save for the swirling cigarette smoke around her face and over her head. "You know, Travis, I was thinking," she said as two lithe fingers pulled the cigarette from her mouth, "Why don't you come sit with me here for a bit."

Obediently, he strolled down the narrow hall, pulling his shirt back over his head, and, with his back against it, slid down the corner near Jones.

She blew out a cloud of smoke that crowned her with a halo.

"That's such a filthy habit," he said, "give it here." He gently took it from her and inhaled himself.

"Hahaa, you're such a hypocrite."

He smiled as he handed it back to her. "I know."

She paused in her speech to sigh and close her eyes.

"What did you want to talk about, Jones-y?"

Her eyes peered at him from their corners as a smile danced on her lips. It took every ounce of moral fiber to keep himself from putting his hand to the side of her face and-

"I was thinking about Derrick."

No more thinking about Jones' body.

"You know that he gets around. Like, girls just throw themselves at him, and he sleeps with them, all of them, and they never speak to him again, how do they do that? I mean, I'm not a virgin, but I don't know how women could have sex so casually-"

"Jones, you never told me you weren't a virgin."

He could tell that he caught her in something she didn't want to admit to. The more he'd gotten to know her the more often it'd happened. He took this as a sign that she was more and more comfortable with him.

Her mouth opened; it was almost a verbalized thought. "Anyway…"

Travis laughed to himself. He'd inquire about this later.

"He has all these girls dying to sleep with him, and why? What makes him so attractive? I mean, yeah he's rather good looking, and yeah he comes from a completely rich family, just look at the loft, and yeah he has a way with words that make your insides feel toasty and warm, but…"

"I think you just explained it yourself, Jones," said Travis quietly.

She gave a slight frown. "But the whole multiple partners thing is such a turn off. If he didn't sleep with so many girls…"

Travis waited for her to continue. "That was a conditional; if he didn't sleep with so many girls, _then…_?"

Jones looked over at him, then forward to a far-off point in the kitchen further down the hall. "_If_ Derrick Webb didn't sleep with so many girls, _then…_" She ran her tongue over her lips, and the man who couldn't take his eyes off her mentally noted the way the light played on them. "Then I think I would be positively crazy for him."

Travis felt his chest cave in like a baseball bat to the heart. He even bent over a little bit. One thousand and one words ran through his head and he couldn't focus on a single one of them. He didn't even know what to do.

He stood up. "Goodnight, Jones," he heard in a voice that wasn't his own.


	3. Chapter 3

Travis was perched upon a stool in front of a large canvas. This was Abstract Painting 401.

"Remember," came the voice of the teacher, "that your brush is an extension of yourself. Let your brush make love to your canvas, like you would make love to a woman, or to a man for you boys who are into that sort of thing."

A devious snicker came from the predominantly female class. The three other men in the class exchanged shifty glances, but Travis' eyes stayed locked on his canvas.

'Here is the world,' he said to himself, 'and there's nothing I can put into it.'

When class was dismissed, every student washed their respective brushes and hands and pallets, set their paintings up to dry, found their coats, and promptly left the class. All students, that is, except for one.

"Yes, Mr. McMinn?" asked the teacher from her desk. She wasn't looking at him; her fingers were nimbly sorting out pieces of paper.

He looked at his canvas. The words were all in his head, they just couldn't formulate properly. After a while, he finally found his approach. "You know me pretty well, don't you, Ms. Waters?"

He heard the rustling of papers cease. "I would say that I know you're a dedicated student, and a very talented artist." The rhythm of her footsteps echoed across the studio. Within a few, short moments she stood behind his canvas facing him. "What is it?"

"I don't know exactly. I can't think abstractly today. I mean, its all abstract, everything; all these thoughts and words are so… jumbled around in my head. But when I try to get it out…"

Ms. Waters was roughly forty-five years old. The wrinkles below her eyes betrayed her age. "Who is she?" she asked.

Travis met her eyes with a look of complete surprise.

"I don't know _you_, Travis, but I know your _type_. Who is she?"

He slouched on his stool wearing the expression of dejection. "The only girl who's ever really been nice to me." He was quiet for a bit, and his patient teacher waited for the words to find themselves. "Last night we were both out, and we'd had a couple of drinks. Our third roommate, the asshole jerk off, was still out when we came back to the loft and…" Travis faced the ceiling for inspiration. Or motivation. It was difficult to tell. "And she- she sort of implied she was… that she had a think for, um, him."

Ms. Waters let the last words ricochet softly off the high walls in the studio. With a kind look at him, she said, "I've been around a while. I know that the only things worth having are the things you're willing to fight for."

He studied his teacher.

"If I knew what I know now when I was your age, I would be married and have a thousand babies and be enjoying my happily ever after." She paused for effect. "If you're going to lay down and die instead of trying to win her over, then say hello to a life of dialogue with gravity."

Travis bore a shy smile. "Th-thank you Ms. Waters."

It wasn't until much later that evening when Travis came back to the loft. He listened as his footsteps echoed back to him in the deep red hallway. He saw Jones at the kitchen table, bent over a cup of coffee and a book. Her nose was always in a book.

She heard him coming and looked up over the rim of her black glasses. He'd often heard her joke about her reading glasses; "These are my birth control glasses," she'd say. "I wear them to save your relationship. If I didn't wear them, your boyfriend would break up with you and come chasing me down."

Glasses or no, Travis couldn't help his mind from briefly wandering down the length of her neck and around the lines of her lips.

"Oh, Travis, it's you."

Her voice broke the spell of imagination, and he snapped back to reality. He shook his head slightly and nodded.

"D'you want some coffee or something?" she offered gently.

He paused, half way to his room. "Uh… nah, actually. I think I'll just turn in, painting took it out of me tonight."

Jones sounded slightly crestfallen. "Oh, okay."

He listened to the sound of his door swinging shut behind him as he flopped down on his bed. His teacher's words rang through his mind. 'If you're going to lay down and die instead of trying to win her over…'

"Easier said than done, Mrs. Waters," Travis said quietly, as he worked his shoestrings loose.


	4. Chapter 4

The boughs of the tree cradled Travis' partially starved artist physique. He'd found himself sitting at the base of the largest tree on campus and, even though it was a slightly wintry day, he found himself warmed by what he was putting to paper.

His sketchpad was propped up by his knees, and he'd tried to draw a smell. Yes, he knew it was abstract, but that was his incentive. He was trying to sketch the smell of Jones.

The day before, he'd heard her in the bathroom. He was trying to make coffee, but couldn't help overhearing the gentle sounds of water in the bathtub as Jones rolled around. When she came out a few minutes later, the smell of soap and vanilla emulated from her soft skin.

He smiled slightly to himself as he remembered the look of shock on her face when he saw her standing there, dripping wet, in just a towel. That mental image of Jones was what kept him warm, and the smell was what he was trying to put to paper.

Voices were murmuring in the distance and growing closer. "Nah man, you serious?"

"Oh yeah, tonight's the night."

Travis rolled his eyes. '_Some_one is getting some tonight,' he thought.

"You're lying. You never sleep with anyone long enough to live with them, at least that's what they say."

Travis' ears perked up.

"She's hot for me, man. Besides, it's not going to be too hard to get her into bed. And if she won't go willingly, I know she's quite fond of hard liquor."

Travis' eyes got very large. He froze. There was the off chance that the two men walking didn't see him at the base of the tree.

"She doesn't sleep around. She's a smart girl."

"She fuckin' lives with me, dude. Come on. Its inevitable; if not now then when?"

Their voices faded off in the distance, and Travis could no longer distinguish their conversation. He put one hand to his forehead. Over and over, he replayed what he'd just heard in his head. There was not a doubt in his mind; Derrick was going to try to sex up Jones.

He flipped his sketchpad shut. When he was certain Derrick and his accomplice were no longer in view, he stood up and bolted for the loft.

"Jones!" he called down the hallway of their home. He hurriedly threw his keys down on the table and rushed down the hall. He bolted into Jones' room.

When the force of the door hit the wall, it made an obscene bang, which made Jones, who was sitting hunched over on her bed, jump and spill red nail polish all over the sheets.

"Aw, damn it, Travis…" she said, getting up quickly, tearing the sheet off the bed.

Travis grimaced inwardly. "Oh Jones, I'm sorry…" He picked up the trailing half of the sheet and helped her carry it out to the kitchen where she promptly started to scrub the polish off.

"What's the matter with you?" she asked.

"I… um… I was wondering, Jones, if you would like to, uh, go out tonight."

She looked at him like he wasn't human anymore. "What?"

"You know, get out. We spend so much time up here in the loft, and… I thought it might be nice to get out or something."

"Travis, you hate clubbing."

"Maybe not clubbing. Like, go out for coffee-"

"We can make coffee here."

"-or go see a movie-"

"We can rent movies."

He dropped the half of the sheet he was holding up and stared at Jones.

She stared back at him.

Their vindictive stares sent waves of telepathic angst back and forth between them. There was a long pause, and not the kind of pause that Travis thought highly of.

"What's the matter with you? You haven't been much of yourself lately."

"What?"

"You shirk around whenever you're here, which is becoming less and less because you stay after every class and run off doing god knows what. You don't sit and talk like you used to, and I haven't seen you work in almost two weeks."

Travis didn't know what to say. A hundred responses came flooding to mind, but not a single one of them could formulate and bubble its way up his throat and into his mouth. He looked at Jones through narrowed eyes and turned his back to her.

"Travis." Her voice was instantly softer. "Travis, please look at me."

"Jones…" he said with an unexpected twinge of anger.

He couldn't find a single intelligible sentence among his thousands of thoughts as he walked back out through the front door.


	5. Chapter 5

Jones sat at the kitchen sink staring at remnants of red nail polish on her lavender sheet. There was a glass of bourbon in her hand.

Travis sat on a bench outside of the math hall, letting the winter air seep in through his coat and cool down his bones.

Derrick was making his way up the many stairs it took to get to the loft, rehearsing in his head how to bewitch Cathy Jones into bed.

Jones took a sip of her drink as Derrick walked in the front door.

Travis could envision Derrick walking in through the front door.

Derrick smiled as he saw Jones take a sip of what looked like bourbon. It also appeared as if she'd been crying.

She looked at him through narrow, vindictive eyes. Derrick was the last person she wanted to see. The first thought that hit her was, 'I wonder who he just got done doing tonight.' She watched as he crossed the room with that wicked, bewitching smile of his directed straight at her. She hated when he did that.

"Hey, Jones," he said.

She was silent, and cradled the glass closer to the palm of her hand.

"You okay? What happened to your sheet?"

Jones deliberately looked away from him. "I- I spilled some nail polish on it. Travis startled me."

"Hey, where is that little bugger? Hanging out after Waters' class again, I bet."

"I dunno," she said, wiping snot from her nose. "He just left about twenty minutes ago."

Derrick, playing it as cool as he possibly could, stood over Jones, picked her up gently and tried to lean her against the counter. "You don't look so good. Did he do something that upset you?"

Her eyes wandered their way into his. She felt a spasm deep inside her that had something to do with either lust or nerves, but she couldn't be sure which. "Nah," she casually lied.

"Jones, you're a horrible liar," he said as he took a lock of her stringy hair and put it behind her ear.

Travis wrapped his scarf closer to his neck. Thoughts were buzzing about his brain louder than normal. He could envision Derrick trying to seduce Jones by smiling that evil smile or doing something subtle like put her hair behind her ear for her. Inwardly, he beat himself up; he knew what Derrick's intent was, but what could he do? He was the quiet, shy, artsy kid who could never get laid, how could he compete with Derrick Webb, male prodigy, who cunningly found his way into the panties of every girl on campus?

He dug his eyeballs deeper into their sockets with the palms of his hands.

The wind took a chilly turn and bit into his bare cheeks and leaked in through the knit pattern of his overcoat.

"Come on, Jones, I'll help you put the sheet in the drier," said Derrick. He tried to take Jones by the hand, but she put it behind her back. "What?" he asked.

She looked into his eyes. "Derrick, I… What are you trying to do?"

"What do you mean? I'm trying to help you get your sheet in the drier."

"No, I mean…" She put a hand to her forehead. She was getting a little too tipsy to be having this conversation.

She watched as Derrick pulled the half-full bottle off the counter.

"Derrick, no, I'm a little off as it is-" Her protests were drowned in bourbon as her glass magically appeared full again.

She watched Derrick watch her. She watched Derrick encourage a sip of her drink. She heard Derrick say she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Her world became slightly fuzzy in a whirlpool of light, and she didn't feel like herself.

She felt Derrick alarmingly close in physical proximity.

"Please…" she tried to protest.

"Shhhh," she heard him try to calm her. "Shhhh, this is what you want."

It was becoming unbearably cold outside the math hall, and Travis was beginning to loose cognitive abilities. He shook his head. It jumbled up all the thoughts. The first one that came to surface was the ever-haunting life lesson from his Abstract Painting teacher; 'If you're going to lay down and die instead of trying to win her over…'

Shivering, he stood up.


	6. Chapter 6

When Travis came through the front door of the loft, it was the same moment that Jones collapsed against the counter, and was the same moment that Derrick looked up in surprise. "Trav!" he said in surprise. "Here, help me get Jones to bed, I think she had a little bit too much to drink tonight."

Derrick was in a compromising situation, and Travis knew it. However, ever the silent one, he walked up the stairs to the platformed kitchen and helped Derrick carry Jones to her bedroom. This was the first time Jones had to have been carried; many a night they would carry Derrick and many more a night they would carry Travis, but this was the first time Jones had been too intoxicated to move.

Once upon her bed, the two men stared at each other.

They had been good friends once a long time ago.

But Travis wasn't looking in the eyes of his good friend any more; his blue eyes were tinted and outlined with 'rapist'.

"What?" asked Derrick.

Travis was quiet. Then, suddenly, it happened. It was completely out of nowhere, and later he questioned what made him do it, but when Travis' callused knuckles collided with Derrick's jawbone, euphoria swept over him in one grand sweep.

"Travis!" yelled Derrick as he massaged his bleeding jaw. "What the fuck!"

"I know what you were going to do to Jones! I heard you talking about it this afternoon; you were going to rape her!"

Derrick stood up quickly, but still stunned by the unexpected blow to his face. "Maybe if you'd just calm down…"

But Travis didn't notice the hand until it met with his stomach. Doubled over, his face soon met Derrick's knee and he heard a slight crack and blood began to pound and flow like he'd never felt before. Both hands went to his face to catch rivers of blood. He watched Derrick's arm cock back for a second punch, but was able to connect the dots a lot faster and nimbly dodge it as his scarf was wrapped around Derrick's wrist.

Letting go of his bleeding nose with one hand, Travis smeared red truth over Derrick's face and pushed him back into Jones' bedroom wall. 

Being braced by the wall, Derrick ran forward and tackled Travis to the ground, punching him hard over and over.

With every blow, Travis felt consciousness slipping further and further from him, a new constellation of stars gleaming before his eyes every time Derrick's fist made contact with his body.

Derrick knew that Travis was immobile, and he stood up overshadowing Travis' body. With a sleeve, he wiped away some of his own blood. "What was that all about, huh? You heard that I was going to rape Jones, and then you try to hit me? What were you thinking?" He sniffled, looking at the blood on his sleeve. "Fuck, I have to get this shit off my face. Don't you go anywhere, and I'll show you what I _really_ meant to do to Jones."

Travis heard her bedroom door swing shut with a soft thud.

'Get up,' he thought to himself.

'You can't,' his other half replied.

'Jones needs you. Her phone is on her night table. Call someone. Get up.'

'You can't.'

'Get up _now_.'

With every effort in what was left of his body, Travis rolled himself to the side. He saw Jones lying, completely unconscious from the alcohol Derrick had persuaded into her, on her bed in a forlorn and broken state. With his weak elbows, he left a trail of blood across her floor and made it to her night table.

The phone rolled itself out of its cradle and almost out of Travis' reach. Everything was a little battle. 'If you're going to just lie down and die…'

"9-1-1?" he asked weakly.


	7. Chapter 7

It wasn't until 6 am that morning when Travis finally climbed into bed. His entire night came flashing back to him in a matter of seconds.

He'd lost a fistfight to his now ex-roommate.

When he was out of the room, Travis had called 9-1-1.

Derrick had found him on the floor by the phone.

And ten minutes later, Derrick was being led away by New York police.

Travis was taken to a hospital immediately, although the name and location escaped him, as he was only half-conscious.

He sat down on his mattress, and he'd forgotten how good it felt under his weight. He didn't bother to check on Jones because he knew she was okay. He'd fought for her. He did. Travis smiled to himself as he unlaced his boots and set them down with a heavy clunk next to his bed.

Pulling a sheet over himself, he took a deep sigh and closed his eyes.

It was then that he heard the soft padding of feet grow ever so slightly louder.

"Travis?" came a softly whispered voice. He opened one eye. "Are you back?"

When he saw Jones standing in his doorframe, his heart melted slightly. The sun was just starting to rise behind her and she looked like an angel. He lifted the corner of his blanket, inviting her into the solstice of his room.

She smiled and crept in, crawled between the sheets, and let her feet nudge his under the blanket. He felt her forehead press against his; two friends were finally joined after a long time apart. Travis felt himself let out a soft sigh. "I missed you," he breathed.

He could feel her smile. "Not just my body?" she breathed, teasing, back.

He opened his eyes to look at her eyelids. "No," he whispered quite solemnly. "I missed _you_. All of you. The way you smell, the way you sip a cup of coffee, the way you play with your hair, the way your hands turn pages of books, the way you look when… when…"

"When I catch you looking at me?" she finished.

He put one hand to the side of her face. He knew that she knew.

Jones opened her honest blue eyes and their eyes locked in one, chaotic tangle of truth coming apart.

Then, when she kissed him, the whole world put itself back together again.


End file.
